Battleships

 

Introduction

This version of the classic game has three ships:

  • Carrier: 4 cells - represented on a board with 'c'
  • Destroyer: 3 cells - represented on a board with 'd'
  • Gun Ship: 1 cell - represented on a board with 'g'

Create a program that allows the user to specify commands for playing battleship. The commands available are:

  • addPlayer: Creates a player for the game.
  • start: Starts a new game with a fleet of ships placed at user's defined (x,y) coordinates.
  • endTurn: Ends the player's turn.
  • print: This command will print out the game board (Exhibit A):
    | 0 | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 |
0| | | | | | | | | | |
1| | | | | | | | | | |
2| | | | | | | | g | | |
3| | | d | d | d | | | | | |
4| | | | | | | g | | c | |
5| | | | | | | | | c | |
6| | | | | | | | | c | |
7| | g | | | | d | | | c | |
8| | | | | | d | | | | |
9| | | | | | d | | | | g |
  • fire: Launches a torpedo at the given (x,y) coordinates.
    • If the (x,y) coordinate is sea then the position will be marked with 'o'.
    • If the (x,y) coordinate is a ship then the position will be marked with 'x'.
    • If a ship has all cells hit then a message should print notifying the player the ship has sunk.

Rules

  • When all ships have been sunk the game ends
  • when the game is finished the game should display a battle report the number of shots fired by each player, including hit/miss ship sunk.
  • Ships sunk should show the lowest possible coordinate for the given ship, for example:
    • A horizontal destroyer on grid reference (2,3), (3,3) and (4,3), but when reporting the sinking of the ship, you only need to reference the first coordinate.
    • A vertical destroyer on ref (5,5), (5,6) and (5,7) but you'll only need to reference (5,5) when reporting.

Using Exhibit A above, here is a battle report based on the ship positions:

[ Player1
Total shots: 23
Misses: 15
Hits: 8
Ships Sunk: [
Gunship: (1,7),
Gunship: (9,9),
Gunship: (7, 2),
Destroyer (2,3) ]
    | 0 | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 |
0| | | o | | | | | | | |
1| | o | | o | | | | | | |
2| | o | | | | | | X | | |
3| | | X | X | X | | | | | |
4| | o | | | | | g | | c | |
5| | o | o | | | o | | | c | |
6| | | | o | | | o | | c | |
7| | X | | | | d | | | x | |
8| | | o | o | | d | | | o | |
9| | | | | o | x | o | | | X |

Sunk ships have all their coordinates marked with an uppercase X and hit cells have a lower case x where they were not sunk.

Restrictions

  • Complete using outside-in
  • Each player has maximum:
    • 1 Carrier
    • 2 Destroyers
    • 4 Gunships
  • Grid is 10 x 10 to keep it simple (but the design should be open for enhancements)

Hardcore enhancement (optional)

  • Implement an AI player

Katalyst is in beta and we'd love your feedback.
Email us at katalyst@codurance.com and let us know what you think.